Nokia’s N9 is a curious creature; we don’t to know if the impressive hardware will make it a hit, or if Nokia’s public abandonment of MeeGo will be the nail in its coffin. Understandably, we’re really excited to see how public perception of the smartphone fares as it’s finally released. Some new insight into just where the N9 will be available, though, makes us all the less optimistic that the smartphone will be the hit it could be.

On Nokia’s website, the N9 now has a page where you can check on the phone’s global availability, choosing from a list of countries and having the opportunity to submit your email address in order to receive updates on when the N9 will come to your neck of the woods. While dozens of nations make the list, it’s the ones that are missing that make it so notable: no US, no Canada, no UK, no Germany – a good portion of large European nations are absent.

Now, there are still plenty of major markets that will be seeing the N9 (though in what order, who knows?), but it seems clear from the list that Nokia is planning to deliberately limit the phone’s global footprint. Could this be to make sure that customers in the markets where it intends to launch Windows Phone 7 hardware are paying attention to that instead of the N9? Perhaps it wants to avoid any confusion that the N9 is also a WP7 device? Mission accomplished, we suppose, but at some price.